Hilda Part 27

"If you don't understand me," Hilda said, dropping into the corner of a sofa, "_Cela que je m'en doute_, it's because you look for too much elaboration. I am a simple creature, done with rather a broad brush--_voila tout!_"

Nevertheless, Miss Livingstone's was a happy impression. The neutrality of her hospital dress left Hilda in a manner exposed: one saw in a special way the significance of lines and curves; it was an astonishingly vigourous human expression.

Alicia leaned forward, her elbow on the arm of her chair, her chin tucked into her palm, and looked at it. The elbow bent itself in a light blue muslin sleeve of extreme elegance, trimmed with lace. The colour found a wistful echo in the eyes that regarded Miss Howe, who was accustomed to the look and met it with impenetrable commonplace, being made impatient by nothing in this world so much as by futility, however charming.

"Just now," Alicia said, "the shadows under your eyes are brushed too deep."

"I don't believe I sleep well in a dormitory."

"Horrible! All the little privacies of life--don't you miss them?"

"I never had them, my dear--I never had them. Life has never given me the luxury of curtains--I don't miss them. An occasional blind--a closed door--and those we got even at the Inst.i.tution. The decencies are strictly conserved, believe me."

"One imagines that kind of place is always clean."

"When I have time I think of Number Three, Lal Behari's Lane, and believe myself in Paradise. The repose is there, the angels also--dear commanding things--and a perpetual incense of cheap soap. And there is some good in sleeping in a row. It reminds one that after all one is very like other women."

"It wouldn't convince me if I were you. And how did the Sisters receive you--with the harp and the psaltery?"

"That was rather," said Hilda gravely, "what I expected. On the contrary, they snubbed me--they really did. There were two of them. I said, 'Reverend ladies, please be a little kind. Convents are strange to me; I shall probably commit horrible sins without knowing it. Give me your absolution in advance--at least your blessing."

"Hilda, you didn't!"

"It is delightful to observe the Mother Abbess, or whatever she is, disguising the fact that she takes any interest in me. Such diplomacy--funny old thing."

"They must be _devoured_ with curiosity!"

"Well, they ask no questions. One sees an everlasting finger on the lip.

It's a little boring. One feels inclined to speak up and say, 'Mesdames, _entendez_--it isn't so bad as you think.' But then their fingers would go into their ears."

"And the rules, Hilda? I can't imagine you, somehow, under rules."

"I am attached to the rules; I think about them all day long. They make the thing simple and--possible. It is a little like living for the first time in a house all right angles after--after a life-long voyage in a small boat."

"Isn't the house rather empty?"

"Oh, well!"

Alicia put out her hand and tucked an irrelevant bit of lace into Hilda's bosom. "I can tell you who is interested," she cried. "The Archdeacon--the Archdeacon and Mrs. Barberry. They both dined here last night; and you lasted from the fish to the pudding. I got so bored with you, my dear, in your new capacity."

A new ray of happiness came into the smile of the novice. "What did they say? Do tell me what they said."

"There was a difference of opinion. The Archdeacon held that with G.o.d all things were possible. He used an expression more suitable to a dinner-party, but I think that is what he meant. Mrs. Barberry thought it wouldn't last. Mrs. Barberry was very cynical. She said anyone could see that you were as emotional as ever you could be."

The eyes of the two women met and they laughed frankly. A sense of expansion came between them, in which for an instant they were silent.

"Tell me about the hospital," Alicia said presently.

"Ah, the hospital!" Hilda's face changed. There came into her eyes the moved look that always waked a thrill in Alicia Livingstone, as if she were suddenly aware that she had stepped upon ground where feet like hers pa.s.sed seldom.

"There is nothing to tell you that is not--sad. Such odds and ends of life, thrown together!"

"Have you had any experiences yet?"

Hilda stared for a moment absently in front of her, and then turned her head aside to answer as if she closed her eyes on something.

"Experiences? Delightful Alicia, speaking your language, no. You are thinking of the resident surgeon, the medical student, the interesting patient. My resident surgeon is fifty years old; the medical student is a Bengali in white cotton and patent-leather shoes. I am occupied in a ward full of deck hands. For these I hold the bandage and the basin; they are hardly aware of me."

"You are sure to have them," Alicia said. "They crop up wherever you go in this world, either before you or behind you."

Hilda fixed her eyes attentively upon her companion. "Sometimes," she said, "you say things that are extremely true in their general bearing.

A fortune-teller with cards gives one the same shock of surprise. Well, let me tell you, I have been promoted to temperatures. I took thirty-five to-day. Next week I am to make poultices; the week after baths and fomentations."

"What are the others like--the other novices?"

"Nearly all Eurasians, one native, a Hindu widow--the Sisters are almost demonstrative to her--and one or two local European girls; the Commissariat-Sergeant cla.s.s, I should think."

"They don't sound attractive and I am glad. You will depend the more upon me."

Hilda looked thoughtfully at Miss Livingstone. "I will depend," she said, "a good deal upon you."

It was Alicia's fate to meet the Archdeacon again that evening at dinner. "And is she really throwing her heart into the work?" asked that dignitary, referring to Miss Howe.

"Oh, I think so," Alicia said; "Yes."

CHAPTER XXVI.

The labours of the Baker Inst.i.tution and of the Clarke Mission were very different in scope, so much so that if they had been secular bodies working for profit there would have been hardly a point of contact between them. As it was, they made one, drawing together in affiliation for the comfort of mutual support in a heathen country where all the other Englishmen wrote reports, drilled troops, or played polo, with all the other Englishwomen in the corresponding female parts. Doubtless the little communities prayed for each other. One may imagine, not profanely, their pet.i.tions rising on either side of the heedless, mult.i.tudinous, idolatrous city, and meeting at some point in the purer air above the yellow dust-haze. I am not aware that they held any other mutual duty or privilege, but this bond was known and enabled people whose conscience p.r.i.c.ked them in that direction to give little garden teas to which they invited Clarke Brothers and Baker Sisters, secure in doing a benevolent thing and at the same time embarra.s.sing n.o.body, except, possibly, the Archdeacon, who was officially exposed to being asked as well and had no right to complain. The affiliation was thus a social convenience, since it is unlikely that without it anybody would have hit upon so ingenious a way of killing, as it were, a Baker Sister and a Clarke Brother with one stone. It is not surprising that this degree of intelligence should fail to see the profound official difference between Baker Sisters and Baker Novices. As the Sister Superior said, it did not seem to occur to people that there could be, in connection with a religious body, such words as discipline and subordination, which were certainly made ridiculous for the time being, where she and Sister Ann Frances were asked to eat ices on the same terms with Miss Hilda Howe. It must have been more than ever painful to these ladies, regarded from the official point of view, when it became plain, as it usually did, that the interest of the afternoon centred in Miss Howe, whether or not the Archdeacon happened to be present. Their displeasure was so clear, after the first occasion, that Hilda felt obliged, when the next one came, to fall back on her original talent, and ate her ice abashed and silent, speaking only when she was spoken to, and then in short words and long hesitations. Thereupon the Sisters were of opinion that, after all, poor Miss Howe could not help her unenviable note--she was perhaps more to be pitied on account of it than anything else. It came to this, that Sister Ann Frances even had an exhibitor's pride in her, and Hilda knew the sensations of a barbarian female captive in the bonds of the Christians. But she could not afford to risk being cut off from those little garden teas. All told, they were few; ladies disturbed by ideas of social duties toward missionaries being so uncommon.

She told Stephen so, frankly, one afternoon when he charged her with being so unlike herself, and he heard her explanation with a gravity which contained an element of satisfaction. "It is, of course, a pleasure to us to meet," he said, "a pleasure to us both." That was part of the satisfaction, that he could meet her candour with the same openness. He was not even afraid to mention to her the stimulus she gave him always and his difficulty in defining it, and once he told her how, after a talk with her, he had lain awake until the small hours unable to stop his excited rush of thought. He added that he was now personally and selfishly glad she had chosen as she did three months before; it made a difference to him, her being in Calcutta, a sensible and material difference. He had better hope and heart in his work. It was the last luxury he would ever have dreamed of allowing himself, a woman friend; but since life had brought it in the oddest way, the boon should be met with no grudging of grat.i.tude. A kind of sedate cheerfulness crept into his manner which was new to him; he went about his duties with the look of a man to whom life had dictated its terms and who found them acceptable. His blood might have received some mysterious chemical complement, so much was his eye clearer, his voice firmer, and the things he found to say more decisive. Nor did any consideration of their relations disturb him. He never thought of the oxygen in the air he breathed, and he seldom thought of Hilda.

They were walking toward the Inst.i.tution together the day he explained to her his gratification that she had elected to remain. Sister Ann Frances and Sister Margaret led; Arnold and Hilda came behind. He had an errand to the Sister Superior--he would go all the way. It was late in May and late in the afternoon; all the tree-tops on the Maidan were bent under the sweep of the south wind, blowing a caressing coolness from the sea. It spread fragrances about and shook down blossoms from the gold-mohur trees. One could see nothing anywhere so red and yellow as they were except the long coat of a Government messenger, a point of scarlet moving in the perspective of a dusty road. The spreading acres of turf were baked to every earth colour. Wherever a pine dropped needles and an old woman swept them up, a trail of dust ran curling along the ground like smoke. The little party was unusual in walking; glances of uncomprehending pity were cast at them from victorias and landaus that rolled past. Even the convalescent British soldiers facing each other in the clumsy drab cart drawn by humped bullocks, and marked _Garrison Dispensary_, stared at the black skirts so near the powder of the road. The Sisters in front walked with their heads slightly bent toward one another; they seemed to be consulting. Hilda reflected, looking at them, that they always seemed to be consulting: it was the normal att.i.tude of that long black veil that flowed behind.

Arnold walked beside his companion, his hands loosely clasped behind him, with the air of semi-detachment that young clergymen sometimes have with their wives. Whether it was that, or the trace of custom his satisfaction carried, the casual glance might easily have taken them for a married pair.

"There is a kind of folly and stupidity in saying it," he said, "but you have done--you do--a great deal for me."

She turned her tired face upon him with a wistful, measuring look. It searched his face for an instant and came back baffled. Arnold spoke with so much kindness, so much appreciation.

"Very little," she said mechanically, looking at the fresh footprints of Sister Ann Frances and Sister Margaret.

"But I know. And can't you tell me--it would make me so very happy--that I have done something for you too--something that you value?"

Hilda's eyes lightened curiously, reverie came into them, and a smile.